Rooney grinned. “I like this idea. And you say it real well…”
Vronsky looked around the group and knew it was time.
“I tell you what,” he suggested with a broad smile, addressing them all. “We have so much to thank you for. Why don’t we all have dinner together? My cousin owns a great restaurant not far from here and he’ll look after you like family. This is no tourist restaurant. This is where only locals go. You can’t come to Kharkiv and not try our local food. You won’t eat better holubtsi anywhere.”
The younger Americans looked at Trapnell for guidance. He hesitated, impressed at the offer but not quite sure.
Vronsky continued, “And, as our honored guests, it is of course our gift to you.”
Trapnell looked at the others, who grinned back. It is a rare soldier who can refuse the offer of high-quality, free food. “Sure. Why not? But we can’t stay late.”
“Don’t worry. There’ll be no problem. The restaurant is on the east side of the city and on the way back to your barracks. We’ll eat, have fun, and get you back to your base in plenty of time.”
Anna Brezhneva waved her phone at Vronsky and shrugged, as if she was asking him an obvious question.
Vronsky smiled. “Anna wants to know if you would like her to invite her girlfriends to make for equal numbers.”
The American men gave him a thumbs up, while Laura Blair sighed tolerantly.
“Make the call,” he said to Brezhneva, and she immediately starting talking into her mobile phone.
Vronsky summoned the waiter and demanded the bill. As he handed over 500 hryvnia, a couple of Mercedes taxis cruised past.
Brezhneva jumped up and waved them down. If the Americans noticed the fact they were the only two taxis in the square, then they gave no sign of being unduly worried.
Vronsky kept a fixed smile on his face, as he listened to the men discuss whether Anna’s girlfriends could possibly be any prettier than she was. What was it with foreigners? They knew he spoke their language, but surrounded by others who could not speak English, they seemed to forget that fact. He caught Laura’s eye.
She pulled a face as if to say sorry.
He smiled and nodded gravely in response. She was an intelligent and sensitive person and, in another life, he would have found himself warming to her.
Vronsky stood. “Shall we?” he asked, as he helped Laura put on her jacket and indicated the two waiting taxis.
They all squeezed in. Unaccountably, once they had split up to do so, a big man got into the front seat of the second vehicle.
“Don’t worry,” Vronsky announced to the Americans. “He is here to make sure your friends are safe. There are some bad people in this city.”
Slightly heady from the unaccustomed beer and friendliness of their new friends, Rooney and Blair sat back in the taxi.
Vronsky ordered the driver to move off. Behind him in the rear view mirror he saw Laura tense. Perhaps his command had been that bit too sharp. Not perhaps what you would expect from a university lecturer. “As I said,” he explained, “the restaurant is not in a tourist area and the driver was surprised we were going there. I had to tell him twice.”
Reassured, the Americans started chatting and pointing as the taxis pulled out into the evening traffic, heading down Ivanova Street before hitting the main road west, Pushkin’ska, on their way to the east of the city. Soon they had left the city center, crossed the Kharkiv River and entered the grim suburbs. Vronsky sensed a growing apprehension and announced that he was ringing his cousin to confirm they were nearly there. The neighborhood might be awful, he explained, but the food was superb and getting a table was not easy. Vronsky saw Trapnell smile and the others followed his lead and relaxed with him as he made his phone call.
Fifteen minutes later, the taxis pulled up outside a tall “Khrushchev” apartment block, one of many built across the Soviet Union in the 1950s and designed to pack as many people as possible into as small a space as possible. If getting the Americans into the taxis in Freedom Square had been the riskiest part of the operation—one shout of alarm and the cars would have immediately been surrounded by inquisitive and hostile locals—this was the second most difficult moment. Vronsky did not need a problem here, where unfriendly eyes might witness what was to happen next. Although there was nobody on the street at the moment, people could well be watching from the surrounding buildings.
“We’re here,” he announced with a smile, stepping out of the car.
Trapnell looked up at him from inside the car and wound the window down. “Where’s the restaurant? What the hell are we doing here?”
Vronsky looked down at him, no longer the friendly university English lecturer. He needed the Americans to do exactly what he told them and that meant he was now cold-eyed, his voice ice-calm and ruthless. “Do exactly as I say. Come with us. Quietly. All of you.”
The Americans were aghast, shock taking over their faces as they began to absorb what was happening. With their eyes locked onto his, they did not see the four men who were now emerging from the ground floor of the apartment block.
Vronsky motioned to them to surround the cars. In moments the Americans were being hauled out of the vehicles, arms locked behind their backs, mouths gagged with gaffer tape, heads covered with blankets, and then dragged toward the building.
All but one.
Master Sergeant Scott Trapnell was a man apart. Not for him the interminable muscle building in the gym favored by most American soldiers; small, wiry, seemingly the most unobtrusive of men, he was an Aikido sensei and black belt and trained obsessively. Instinctively, in the face of an attack, the long hours of Aikido practice kicked in. A quiet calm came over him as his assailant yanked him out of the car. Then, using the other man’s weight, the American dropped a shoulder and swung his assailant, applying the classic bent-armlock technique to turn his arm at the elbow and throw him onto his back and onto the road. As the man fell, his head snapped back against the tarmac with an audible crunch and he was silent.
The next man whirled to face him, hands up, ready for another such move. From his stance he was obviously well trained in martial arts.
Trapnell, wearing a sharp pair of leather cowboy boots for his big trip downtown, instead kicked him full force between the legs. Nothing subtle, nothing ninja, just a good, old-fashioned kick for goal, with all the force of his anger and betrayal that he could put behind it. “Fuck you!” Trapnell screamed, as his boot connected with his balls.
The man dropped. Gasping. Eyes bulging in speechless agony.
Satisfied that the man was staying down, Trapnell looked around him and saw his fellows already being bundled away. For a moment, and with two men down, there was nobody to hold him on his side of the car. He ran. Hard and fast. And he was a good runner. Half-marathon was his specialty, but he was still very useful at a full sprint.
“Get him!” Vronsky yelled from the other side of the car. But there was no one to get him.
The tower blocks around them were full of their enemies. In a few more seconds the American was going to start yelling for help. And that would bring people out onto the street, some with guns, who might help. The American would get away and the whole plan would be blown.
Without hesitation or remorse, Major Anatoly Nikolayevich Vronsky of the 45th Guards Spetsnaz Regiment reached under his jacket and, with the practiced coolness of a Special Forces soldier, pulled out a PSS silenced pistol, issued only to Russian Special Forces, KGB, FSB and MVD. He took careful aim at the center of the sprinting Trapnell’s back and fired two successive bursts of two rounds in quick succession at twenty-five meters.